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2007

Monday 20 August 2007 Keeping Cool, Clear Tap Water
The fear is that if too many people convert to bottled water, there would be less political support for spending on our aging water distribution systems.

If he could bottle and sell it ...

VANCOUVER - It was an old prospector, grizzled and gnarled from years in the bush, who led Mike McCarthy to his own El Dorado. Not a fabled city of gold, but a small, unnamed creek in the remote B.C. interior.

Mr. McCarthy went looking, and found it.

"I tasted the water and said, 'Holy s---, that tastes good,' " recalls Mr. McCarthy, a real estate developer. "So I took the next step and had it analyzed."

Just as the prospector professed, the water is exceptionally pure. "Absolutely crystal clear," says Mr. McCarthy, and so clean it can be safely consumed without filtering or purification. The same goes for water from three other creeks nearby.

They spill from a mountain some 1,000 metres above Adams Lake, 80 kilometres northeast of Kamloops. An old logging road leads close to the source. Other than the odd passing moose or bear, says Mr. McCarthy, the area is deserted. The water is nectar, and free for the taking.

For now.

Mr. McCarthy, 59, has hatched an ambitious plan to cash in on his find. Acting with an investment broker, he says he has found a pair of potential customers in the Middle East, where sales of bottled water have skyrocketed, and where well-heeled consumers think nothing of spending $4 for a litre of fancy-labelled spring water, far more than they would spend on gasoline.

Mr. McCarthy will not name his Middle Eastern mystery partners, owing to the "nasty" and "cutthroat" competition in the global water business. "They are not in Iran and they do not need water for nuclear reactors," was all he would allow.

Both customers are willing to buy as much Adams Lake creek water as he can bottle and ship, he says.

Mr. McCarthy crunched the numbers. He studied B.C.'s water regulations and the rules that govern commercial water collection and sales. He calculated the lowest average flow emanating from his four streams. Mr. McCarthy determined that he could legally siphon one million imperial gallons -- or 4.54 million litres -- of water per day, then bottle and ship it.

Were Mr. McCarthy's creek water to sell for a bargain $2 a litre in Middle Eastern grocery stores, it would fetch a staggering $3.3-billion. Each year.

Mr. McCarthy has lived the last two years in a trailer, next to a construction project of his in Sicamous, a community south of Adams Lake. His water discovery could make him very wealthy indeed.

But trouble looms. The Sierra Club of Canada's B.C. chapter has decided to do everything in its power to put a cork in Mr. McCarthy's plan.

Environmentalists hate the idea of "privatizing" a public resource and shipping it abroad, no matter how parched the potential customers might be. What's more, exporting bulk volumes of water from Canada is not permitted under the federal Water Resources Protection Act, which took effect in 1999. Water companies in Newfoundland and Ontario have tried to have the act modified, without success.

Mr. McCarthy says his proposal has been through a public input stage and is now being considered by provincial authorities. It does not involve the bulk export of water because it will be bottled in a $10-million plant he expects to build in the town of Barriere, north of Kamloops. The plant would employ about 35 people, he says.

Under Canadian law, water sold in containers of 20 litres or less qualifies as bottled, not bulk. Hence it may be sold abroad.

Kathryn Molloy, head of the Sierra Club in B.C., says this is merely a loophole, one that "we intend to close. If selling one million gallons of water a day is not considered a bulk volume, then I don't know what is. You can't go and buy that amount at your local Superstore."

"I am not trying to circumvent any rules," counters Mr. McCarthy. "I haven't even said I'm going to sell it in 20-litre containers. My customers haven't indicated what sizes they want. They might want to buy 350-millilitre containers for all I know. I am following Canadian laws to the letter."

No matter, says Ms. Molloy. Bottling water, she notes, is also bad. The process uses energy; so does shipping the final product around the world. "We'd like to get people off the bottle," she said yesterday from her office in Victoria.

And people in distant Middle Eastern locations who would really like to enjoy some clean, Canadian water? "I'm not sure it's the thirsty people who would benefit from this," she says, suggesting that only the rich would buy Mr. McCarthy's water.

The Sierra Club will work with other environmental groups and organizations, such as the Council of Canadians, in an effort to derail Mr. McCarthy's proposal. "We hope to raise a public outcry," Ms. Molloy says.

She has never spoken to Mr. McCarthy. Her knowledge of the project comes from local press reports. "We have not discussed meeting with him at this point," she admits.

Anytime, anywhere, says Mr. McCarthy. He will bring the coffee. Made from the best damn creek water in B.C.

bhutchinson@nationalpost.com

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